US President Barack Obama and Director of the Central Intelligence
Agency Leon Panetta. —Reuters/File photo

WASHINGTON: Acting on US tips, foreign intelligence services currently capture, interrogate and detain for the United States most terrorism suspects found outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday.

Citing unnamed current and former US government officials, the newspaper said only the highest-level suspects represent an exception.

In the past 10 months, about a half-dozen mid-level financiers and logistics experts working with the al-Qaeda terror network have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries, the report said.

They were seized after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, noted the paper, citing an unnamed former US counterterrorism official.

In addition, Pakistan’s intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of American intelligence and logistical support, the report said.

The two are the highest-ranking Al-Qaeda operatives captured since President Barack Obama took office, The Times pointed out. But they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States.

The current approach, which began in the last two years of the administration of former president George W. Bush, has gained momentum under Obama, the paper said.

It is driven in part by court rulings and policy changes that have closed the secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency, and all but ended the transfer of prisoners from outside Iraq and Afghanistan to US military prisons, The Times noted.

Human rights advocates say that relying on foreign governments to hold and question terrorist suspects could carry significant risks, according to the report, because the fate of many terrorism suspects whom the Bush administration sent to foreign countries remains uncertain.

One suspect, Ibn al-Shaikh al-Libi, who was sent to Libya after his 2001 capture by the CIA, was recently reported to have died there, the paper said.